On this day · 31 years ago · 1995
31 Years Ago Today: Jerry Garcia Played His Second-to-Last Show Ever With the Grateful Dead
One night before the Grateful Dead's true final show, Jerry Garcia took the stage at Chicago's Soldier Field for a set that longtime fans still describe as rough around the edges and quietly poignant.
By Axel, Classic Rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
On July 8, 1995, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead played Soldier Field in Chicago, the first of two consecutive closing nights on the band's summer tour. It was Garcia's second-to-last concert ever; the true final show came the next night, July 9. Garcia, playing his Doug Irwin-built Rosebud guitar, died about a month later, on August 9, 1995, at age 53.
Two nights in Chicago
On July 8, 1995, the Grateful Dead played Soldier Field in Chicago, the first of two consecutive closing nights on that summer's tour, per the band's own official show archive. The set ran through Jack Straw, Sugaree, Althea, and Tennessee Jed in the first set, then opened the second with China Cat Sunflower into I Know You Rider before working through Saint Of Circumstance, Terrapin Station, Drums, Space, The Other One, and a version of Visions Of Johanna that longtime fans still single out from that entire tour. Bob Weir played much of the show on acoustic guitar.
Not the final show, but close
It's a common mix-up: July 8 is often cited online as Garcia's last-ever performance, but it wasn't. That distinction belongs to the following night. JamBase's account of the final show is explicit that Garcia made his last appearance with the Grateful Dead on July 9, 1995, at the same Soldier Field, closing out a two-night stand at a venue the band had played since 1991. July 8 was the second-to-last night of Garcia's performing career, not the last one.
A hard tour, an emotional highlight
That summer's tour was already being remembered as a rough one by the time the band reached Chicago. Ultimate Classic Rock's retrospective on the tour's final dates describes a run plagued by incidents and visibly affected by Garcia's declining health, a run some fans came to call the "Tour of Doom" after the fact. Against that backdrop, the Visions Of Johanna performance stood out. It's the moment from the two-night Soldier Field stand that shows up again and again in fan retrospectives of the run, a rare stretch of the old clarity in a tour that mostly didn't have it. Garcia played the show on Rosebud, the last of the three iconic custom electrics luthier Doug Irwin built for him across a decades-long collaboration, and his main Grateful Dead instrument from 1990 onward.
A month later
Garcia died August 9, 1995, at a rehabilitation facility in Forest Knolls, California, about a month after walking off the Soldier Field stage, per Jerry Garcia's documented career timeline. The Grateful Dead's surviving members officially disbanded the band that December, closing out a thirty-year run that started in the mid-1960s San Francisco scene. The two Soldier Field shows that July, imperfect and hard to watch in places, are the closing pages of that catalog.
Boomers GBL Nickel-Plated Steel (.010–.046)
Why this one: Garcia's documented primary string brand across his career, light-to-medium gauge nickel-wound in standard E, the same territory he was playing in on Rosebud that July.
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